Grab Microsoft RDC or should I try Screen Sharing w/ VNC?

I was about to grab RDC to manage my HTPC from my desktop, but I noticed it's last update is from May 2011, and we've seen two OS Xs since then so I'm not 100% confident that it will play nice with 10.8.

Is it still the best/recommended option for remoting into Windows systems, or is the built in Screen Sharing recommended, connecting to a VNC server running on the Windows box? Does Screen Sharing even work over VNC (ie: Host: vnc://[ip address] )? I've always assumed it could, just have never needed to try, just stuck with RDC when connecting to Windows, and Screen Sharing between my MacBook and Mac Pro. If not the Screen Sharing app, does command+k vnc://[ip address] work?

[edit]Oh, and I just noticed this:

Quote:

Supported operating systems: Mac OS X

Operating System Versions: Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or a later version of Mac OS. Note Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac (version 2.1.1) is not intended for use with Mac OS X v10.7 (Lion) or later.

I move between Cord and RDP as they both have their annoyances - RDP is crashy but works well when it does, CORD doesn't have complete features. VNC is more ubiquitous so if you have other systems you'd like to administer remotely it's a good bet but I haven't had need to use it for awhile - someone else would need to chime in.

I use RDC on Mountain Lion to connect to Windows machines all the time without issue.

Same here. Works great.

Works great unless you keep it connected for extended period of times, or your machine goes to sleep or the machine goes to sleep or the machine reboots while connected or you get an smbfs error - under all conditions the app flat out crashes instead of returning to the connect dialog as it should - thus it not being officially supported on 10.7 and up. For quick in and out or 30-45 min sessions - hell maybe even just keeping active within it constantly, it works fine.

1) The Mac client kinda sucks. The handling of a session as a real "document" is entirely half-assed. If you create a new session, you can't edit its settings until you've saved it, closed it, and reopened it. WTF?

2) The RDC login on the Windows side logs the current user _out_, so you can't use it to show someone how to do something. Bleah.

Yeah, that's how RDC works - one user per session. It locks the machine though, it doesn't log the other user out. The license for Windows client only allows one user at a computer at a time. Windows Server doesn't have this limit and an administrator can shadow someone's session.

As for using the RDC for Mac client... It crashes when I try to exit and I hate how the last RDP file I used is considered the basis for the next session and not Default.RDP. I also hate that RDP files generated by RDP for Mac are different from RDP for Windows. Otherwise, I've used in the past to stream music from my desktop to my Mac and there was no issues with it.

Yeah, that's how RDC works - one user per session. It locks the machine though, it doesn't log the other user out. The license for Windows client only allows one user at a computer at a time. Windows Server doesn't have this limit and an administrator can shadow someone's session.

As for using the RDC for Mac client... It crashes when I try to exit and I hate how the last RDP file I used is considered the basis for the next session and not Default.RDP. I also hate that RDP files generated by RDP for Mac are different from RDP for Windows. Otherwise, I've used in the past to stream music from my desktop to my Mac and there was no issues with it.

I save separate rdp session profiles and just launch them individually with Quicksilver - I never directly launch RDP itself; seems to be the best way to do it.

I do the same, but there's the rare time I need to connect to a machine I don't have an .rdp for, and when I exit, I get a message "Do you want to save changes to Server.rdp?" No you moron, save it to Default.rdp like Windows if I launch the app directly!

Haven't used the RDC Client on Lion/ML, but it works very well up to & including SL.But the big difference which hasn't been mentioned between it & VNC is performance.

If you're working on a local wired LAN, VNC is reasonable (though even on a Gigabit LAN, it's not quite butter smooth, and I wouldn't recommend running say a HiDef video on the remote machine & viewing with the client).However, even on a WAN, RDC also works near-instaneously, whereas I've seen no other solution from a Mac that is anywhere close, irrespective of the target OS (and I once spent a couple of weeks experimenting).

I've personally been using FreeRDP built with homebrew (executable is xfreerdp) which works pretty well with a few exceptions. I haven't tried device sharing (drives, printers, etc.) and I'm not even sure that functionality exists. Cut and paste between the host and remote desktop session doesn't work for me either. It does however support NLA. I've successfully connected to Server 2000, XP, Server 2003, 7 and Server 2008, the later two configured to require NLA. It would be nice if CoRD would get around to adopting FreeRDP instead of rdesktop.

I used to use the Microsoft RDC but I personally got fed up with the crashes and otherwise gimpy behavior on Lion, haven't used it all on Mountain Lion. If I need to do more than FreeRDP can handle I'll fire up a Windows VM and use the included remote desktop client.

There are plugins included with FreeRDP that you need to enable on the command line to get cut/paste and device mapping. And if anyone knows where to find client development documentation for FreeRDP I'd appreciate it. As far as I can see there's almost no documentation for that project whatsoever.

Gave CoRD a go initially, and so far it's working great for my needs which are very minimal. Mainly just need to be able to hop on and restart or update the Minecraft server, take care of Windows updates, make sure the Plex server is running, and that's about it. We do Netflix and Hulu on the Wii U now, and Plex through the new Plex web UI in the Wii U browser. Almost never even have to change the TV input anymore, unless I want to play something on the Xbox

Also, SO much faster than VNC. It's not even funny. Why is VNC into Windows so godawful slow, but VNC into my Macs (from either Windows or Linux) is pretty decently fast?

Gonna check out Royal TSX and FreeRDP as well, just for some perspective. Probably not going to bother installing Microsoft RDC though, now.

Found out today that Chicken (of the VNC) is a much faster client than Screen Sharing. I can't use RDC because I don't have win7 pro, only home premium..

I did extensive testing of VNC client/server combos way back... IME the speed of the server (esp. HW-wise, but also software-wise) was much more significant than that of the client. You may therefore want to experiment with different software on the server side (e.g., OSXVNC, which is now called Vine Server) rather than using the OS X built-in one, to see if that makes a difference in your setup.